For testing purposes I did incremental back up right after full back up. It gave me BackUp2 1.25G in size...WOW! Is this normal even I did not do anything to the computer?

Thanks.

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I don't use incrementals so I don't really know and it seems big but:

Image programs do not just backup files that are changed, they backup sectors that have changed. This means that a file that is unchanged but moved is going to be part of the incremental. Things that move files without you doing anything are Windows optimization, defragging, programs like firewalls writing log entires, etc.

If you just completed a restore do a full backup instead of an incremental because the incremental will be about the same size as the full. This is because TI does not necessarily put the data back into the same sector it was copied from.

Thank you...
Actually what is better and safer Full back up, differntial or incremetal?

Thanks.

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Good question . I always do Full but it takes more space and time, plus you don't tend to them as often. Incrementals are fastes but will take longer to restore. Also, if you have a bad incremental in a long series of incrementals you can't go any further.

Differentials take longer to do since they are recording all changes since the Full backup. They are quicker to restore. The files are bigger than incrementals. You only need to have the Full and the last differential backup to do a restore. Unfortunately a bug in TI will not it permit a differential archive unless all of the intermediate differentials are present. Hopefully, they will get this fixed.

If your system is working properly and you do a verify after each creation, it probably doesn't really matter which you select. However, I would not have a string of a large number of incrementals. How long is long? A full on say Sunday and then daily incrementals until the next Sunday when a full is taken again would make me happy.

If you are using your backups as strictly disaster recovery then the faster differential restore time isn't likely to be a big factor. Hard drives really don't fail all that often! If you like to make a backup before testing software etc then restore to get rid of all traces of it, they full backups are likely a better way to go.

On my C drive I run a full weekly and daily incremental backups to an external firewire attached drive. The C drive is a 100 GB drive with about 50 GB used. Each day's incremental backup takes between .5 GB and 1.5 GB. I have had no problems restoring full disk images or individual files. I am still running V9 build 2337

Thank you very much for valuable information. But we forget about very important factor... is virus infection or part of system corruption. Lets assume I got a virus, worm that I did not detect right away or let's say something happened in the registry that created your flash player malfunction.
The incremental back ups could save me from a disaster, I could find a back up day before computer was infected with wirus. Not knowing about the virus and a full back up could ruin everything.

BTW that was my case, I used Retrospect HD with system roll back points and by rolling back a month (system restore off) it saved me from reformatting the drive. The virus and operating system malfunction were fixed!!!
Unfortunately Retrospect has a lot of bugs.

Well, I won't put all of my eggs in one basket. That's why I use 3 or 4 different backup methods. Acronis True Image is one. Retrospect 7.5 works flawlessly (including seamless restores) for me and is another one. Personally, I think ATI does a pretty respectable job used strictly as a full imaging program and that's all I use it for right now.

The only backup program I use on a time interval more frequently than one day is AJC Active Archive to protect data files and their prior revisions. For OS and programs, IMO, daily or even a weekly interval is fine -- and depending on the storage space you have available, full images on either of those frequencies cover me fine.

Thank you very much for valuable information. But we forget about very important factor... is virus infection or part of system corruption. Lets assume I got a virus, worm that I did not detect right away or let's say something happened in the registry that created your flash player malfunction.
The incremental back ups could save me from a disaster, I could find a back up day before computer was infected with wirus. Not knowing about the virus and a full back up could ruin everything.

BTW that was my case, I used Retrospect HD with system roll back points and by rolling back a month (system restore off) it saved me from reformatting the drive. The virus and operating system malfunction were fixed!!!
Unfortunately Retrospect has a lot of bugs.

Your thoughts...

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As you said you want to restore to just before the virus infection if that is your removal method. No difference if you had done a full or an incremental since there is nothing to stop you from doing a full every day. You are more likely to do an incremental everyday though.

Never only keep just one backup archive, however it is done. You want to be able to go back in time if necessary as you have pointed out. I keep a large number of fulls on a second HD and from time to time I copy some to DVD which is cheap and easy to store. For that purpose, I always split my backups at 1492 MB which permits 3 tib files to fit nicely on a DVD without using UDF format.

Professional for Windows, looks like it's running $65 to $85, that includes 2 network clients. I use it for nightly backup of my household's 4 desktops and 2 laptops, served by my own desktop.

The Express version is commonly included in external hard drive purchases but I've never tried it. There are indeed enterprise/server versions that sell for hundreds of dollars and add-on options that can get you into thousands of $. I think it's an excellent software but it probably isn't suitable for the majority of home users the way ATI can be.

To back on DVDs... It would take 18 DVDs each time because my hard disc is 70GB. About Retrospect 7.5, it's like 6.0 that came with one touch Maxtor drive difficult to understand the initial set up, but after you did its stable software. Retrospect 1.1 has a lot of bugs, for example, sometimes you lose the roll back points and to make this software work again you need to fully remove it reinstall it. Also very often when you back up it creates a back up files 3 times larger than original!!!.

I heard that Genie is #1 back up and Acronis is #2 rated according to consumer reports.

I thought I'd try out the "incremental backup" part of ATI. The full backup for my setup -- 25GB system & program C partition; 40GB image backup partition; 100 GB data partition; 100GB partition -- where I'm only imaging "C", comes out to 2.0GB. The first incremental backup I did was about 15MB. I thought: "Yeah...this makes more sense". Then, the next incremental backup I did -- where the only difference was 1 game of Freecell -- ended up being 1.9GB. I tried several times with the exact same results. After that, I decided it didn't make sense to even muck with the incremental routine. And not to beat a dead horse, but this is yet another "feature" that simply doesn't work in this program. I don't know about anyone else, but I tend to dislike and distrust programs that don't come close to doing what they say. The only thing I've found so far that works without a hitch is the full image backup part of ATI 9.0. The restore is goes from slow to totally non-functional, depending on which drive the image file resides. Sorry, but to me, that's a pretty sad -- but true -- picture of this program right now.

The first incremental backup I did was about 15MB. I thought: "Yeah...this makes more sense". Then, the next incremental backup I did -- where the only difference was 1 game of Freecell -- ended up being 1.9GB. I tried several times with the exact same results.

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Hello skbaltimore,

Just a thought but do you have Windows' System Restore activated? If so it could well have created a system restore point between the first and second incrementals.

Sorry for jumping in late.... but about the TI bug that requires saving all intermediate differentials.... can one delete all the differentials and safely start a new series of differentials on the original base image?

.... can one delete all the differentials and safely start a new series of differentials on the original base image?

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Yes, although there is always a slight risk that your next created image could end up corrupted. Therefore you might want to consider temporarily moving the most recent old differential into another folder until you've successfully validated the new one. After that you can safely delete the remaing old differential from its temporary location.

Yes, although there is always a slight risk that your next created image could end up corrupted. Therefore you might want to consider temporarily moving the most recent old differential into another folder until you've successfully validated the new one. After that you can safely delete the remaing old differential from its temporary location.

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Unfortunately, I am now more confused. My practice has been to create base images which are regularly "differentially" updated for about ten days... at which point I delete the differentials... save the base (with a 'monthly' version offloaded to DVDs...) and start anew with a base and subsequent differentials.

Based on your post, it appears I ought to switch to incrementals to conserve storage space since I can't delete some of the differentials in the series. Is the cost for switching from "differentials" to "incrementals" only speed of restoration? And do I need to also move all old backup base images to a separate directory to avoid data corruption?

Sorry if I confused you. You can indeed delete all the differentials and create new ones based on the original full image. I was just sounding a note of caution that it might be wise not to delete all the differential in case the new one is corrupt (you could have a lot of data changes since your last monthly backup to DVD!!).

In fact, I now recall that there is a bug in TI 9.0 that requires the "base" image plus all the preceeding differentials in order to be able to "validate" the latest differential (you can, however, "restore" to a point in time using just the "base" image plus any one of the differentials). So really my cautious recommendation should have been to create your latest differential, use TI's Backup Archive Validation Wizard to validate the image and then delete all differentials bar the latest one.